Have a Piece of American Pie

Firstly, I tried to contact the second with a birthday song list this weekend.  Unfortunately, he has a very  low social media presence.  To the best of my knowledge, his birthday was never acknowledged, anywhere, unless it was super private, or I had the totally wrong date.  Either way, I have yet to have a response.  I might need a greater/wider social media presence myself, but that is, again, another topic for a later post.  This week, I am going to present a very weird series of connections, almost a conspiracy, but not quite.  This linchpin to this series is the song "American Pie" by Don McLean.  A magazine I looked at over a year ago felt that it was the quintessential rock song.  It is fairly long with lyrics that are difficult to figure out.  Supposedly, it is about the so-called 'day the music died,' but almost any and all events from the 60s could fit in quite applicably.  'The day the music died' involved a plane crash that killed three budding rock musicians in 1959:  Bill Haley, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens.  Strangely enough, "American Pie" was number one on the twelfth anniversary of that crash. Richie Valens was only on that plane because he won a coin toss.  The loser of that toss was Wayland Jennings, who would later have a long career as a famous country singer. He is also known for his lengthy partnership with Willie Nelson, as well as both having tax problems.  (Remember this; it's important.)  McLean has had other songs, but none as big of a hit.  Supposedly, McLean was also the inspiration behind the Roberta Flack hit "Killing Me Softly with His Song,' written after seeing him perform, which songs unknown.  "Killing Me Softly with His Song"  became Flack's second number one hit a year after McLean's "American Pie," as well as her second consecutive Grammy for 'Record of the Year.' In the mid 90s, a hip-hop trio from New Jersey would cover that song and it too became a hit, even though it was never released as a commercial single and therefore ineligible to chart on the Hot 100 list at that time.  The trio were the Fugees.  The group fell apart soon after their only real hit, for the possibility of individual success.  Wyclef Jean would become more of a producer or guest for others, most notably with Shakira on her biggest hit "Hips Don't Lie." The group's female member, Lauryn Hill, would go on to have the biggest success, for a short time.  Her solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill became a Grammy winning smash.  However, she has yet to score another hit, as she hit multiple problems of the years, most notably tax evasion charges.  So, through this bizarre series of connections, one could say that Wayland Jennings and his legal troubles are the reasons why Lauryn Hill got into legal trouble.  Yes, the ties are very tenuous, but the argument is fairly sound.  Hey, I find all of this very interesting, otherwise it wouldn't be the topic of this post, now would it?